The following is a breakdown of the more troublesome hunter abilities.

DEFENSIVE ABILITIES

Deterrence

While at first glance deterrence might appear to give a hunter 100% immunity to damage, they are still vulnerable to a couple of attacks.
Firstly, it is impossible to parry a rogue’s opening moves. Ambush, cheap-shot and garrote will all hit through deterrence, so if the hunter uses it at the very last second, there’s still a chance of a kill. It’s usually best to open with a cheap-shot since a stunned hunter is unable to parry your attacks, regardless of the deterrence buff. Unfortunately, good hunters will cast flare when they use deterrence, stopping you from restealthing. If this happens, you can use backstab to continue attacking, since its positional requirements seem to over-ride the chance of being parried. The other attacks that the hunter is vulnerable to are an engineer’s Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket and your shivs.

Disengage

Unless the hunter is BM spec, the cooldown on disengage can be as low as 16seconds with talents and a glyph. It’s common for a hunter to jump just before they cast it, so try and use this early warning to land a gouge just before they disengage. It may break early due to a dot, but every second that you can slow a hunter down will help in the long run.

Freezing Trap

This is the trap that turns you into an iceblock. Cloak of Shadows can protect you from this, but be careful using it since it will not stop you from triggering the graphically identical Frost Trap.

Frost Trap

Personally, I absolutely hate being kited. As far as raging goes, I’m always a lot calmer when I’m CC’d than when I’m walking through a Frost Trap at a fraction of my normal speed. There’s not much you can do about this snare, cloak won’t affect it and the aura lasts for 30seconds (enough time for it to come off cooldown again). Grin and bear it, though try to take the fight away from the aura if possible.

Freezing Arrow

A ranged version of freezing trap which shares the same cooldown as the hunters other frost traps. In arenas this will often be used immediately after a scatter-shot on your healer. Ideally when my healer is hit by scatter-shot, I try and move ontop of where the trap lands so I get to eat the freezing trap instead – most of the time it either breaks cause I’m dotted/autoshot. Easier said than done, especially when you’re on the other side of the map, so try and convince your healer to stay close to you.

Snake Trap

In arenas, this trap can be a blessing as well as a curse. If the snakes spawn and switch to your partner, the deadly poison that they inflict can function as a cc-breaker (very useful for negating wyvern sting, freezing traps and scatter shots) and will give mana back to shamans through their water shield ability. The snakes have poisons similar in ability to your crippling, deadly and mind-numbing poisons.

Feign Death

This ability is easily the biggest cause of lost combo-points I’ve encountered. If activated during a snake trap, or when their pet is attacking you, you’ll probably lose your target and start mutilating the wrong enemy. The fastest way to recover from this is to either bind your tab key to “target nearest enemy player”, or rely entirely on target macros (arenas only).

Flare

Flare is another spell that is available for use the second it wears off. CloS will not protect you from losing stealth – getting a cheapshot through a flare when the hunter is standing in the aura’s middle is extremely risky (though possible). I might be mistaken, but flare doesn’t seem to work on ticks/pulses. If you need to vanish after being caught, watch the flare debuff icon – it can stay up a few seconds longer than you’re in the flared area.

Scatter Shot (Survival, Marksmanship)

While this is in the Survival tree, it is also taken by Marksmanship hunters (BM hunters skip it and take Aimed Shot instead). There’s nothing you can really do about being scatter shotted, other than hope there are dots ticking on you. Take care if you’re hit by this on the edge of a bridge/platform, you’ll come out of the scatter-shot facing a random direction.

Wyvern Sting (Survival)

A 10 second CC on the same diminishing returns as freezing trap. Both WotF and Stoneform racials will remove this sting if available.

Readiness (Marksmanship)

Preparation for hunters, well, Marksmanship hunters. Annoyingly this resets the cooldowns on both Disengage and Deterrence, and there’s no Hypothermia-type debuff to stop hunters using them straight away.

Hunter’s Mark

I always like to activate stealth just after the gates open, but the one potential downside to this is that a hunter may be able to drop their Hunter’s Mark onto you before you can stealth. You can cloak the mark off (get out of line of sight to avoid the 10% chance the hunter will reapply it), vanish it (terrible waste of a cooldown) or have it dispelled by a priest, paladin or fellhunter. The last time I can remember being caught out by this was on Nagrand Arena – luckily the hunter sent his pet in to attack me so we nuked it behind a pillar before he could pull it out of combat…

Concussive Shot

Yet another snare, this time undispellable (with the exception of vanish or a paladin’s Hand of Freedom spell).

Wing Clip

Another 60% snare, though luckily it does not stack with the freezing trap debuff.

Track Hidden

Hunters do have a slightly higher stealth-detection level than other classes (for a breakdown of stealth/detection levels, read this post). Be extra careful when moving around hunters when in stealth and stay behind them whenever you can.

OFFENSIVE ABILITIES

Kill Shot

Evil 10k+ crits at the worst possible time. With a 30k health pool, you’re in danger of Kill Shots at the 6k hp mark. If you have a glyphed Cloak of Shadow, you can perhaps survive the hit long enough to LoS the hunter or receive a heal. Perhaps.

Aimed Shot

An undispellable healing debuff. You can try and time your evasions so that they are activated just before aimed shot runs out, but there’s only a 25% chance the next aimed shot will miss.

Steady Shot

A hard hitting shot with a short cast bar. Try not to embarrass yourself by kicking it (especially if using a kick-announcing addon… whoops) as it is uninterruptable. It is however a good time to stun/gouge/disarm, since the hunter is unable to dodge or parry any attacks while the cast bar is ticking away.

The Beast Within (Beast Mastery)

Ten seconds of CC immunity on a 1min40 CD. The only way of cutting down their damage is through a disarm. Positioning is vital so make sure you either get behind them before you try, or catch them in a steady shot if they start casting one. While it would be funny if Anesthetic poison dispelled Bestial Wrath/Beast Within, it doesn’t.

PET ABILITIES

Web, Venom Web Spray and Pin

Two ranged snares and one melee snare, on 40-second cooldowns (or 27-second cooldowns for BM hunters). These count as magic effects and can be dispelled or cloaked if needed.

Intimidation (Beast Mastery)

Limited to only BM hunters (thank god), on a one minute cooldown.

Additional Tactics for Rogue vs Hunter

Rogue vs Hunter is one of those encounters where it’s worth using double wound-poison. You’ll struggle to keep crippling poison on your target otherwise and the chances of keeping deadly poison ticking on a hunter is pretty low. Also, using double-wound will let you gouge when needed. Keeping crippling applied is a necessity – if it does drop off you can use Deadly Throw as a temporary replacement, though it’s not a great alternative since the movement reduction of Deadly Throw is less than that from Wing Clip/Frost Trap. In a BG/duel situation, do whatever you can to stay in range of the hunter, up to and including the use of blind as a gap-closer.

Hopefully some of that information will be of use – there’s no magic pve-style rotation to ensure a kill on a hunter, it’s more a case of perseverence and keeping your fingers crossed. Try not to get too frustrated when being kited (damn I need to practice that) and if you’re in an arena, try and look at the situation as a whole before deciding it’s pointless to chase the hunter and making a switch to another player. It may look and feel that you’re having no impact, but by sticking on the hunter you are limiting his damage and hopefully letting your partner/s work miracles

Footnote

I have an 80 hunter but haven’t tried to play it seriously in arenas so I’m only really aware of one side of the fight – if I’ve made any glaring mistakes please let me know!

The best way of doing this is with focus macros. Firstly you need to focus the enemy that you plan on controlling. The most basic way of doing so is by binding a key to the ‘Focus Target’ ability in your WoW keybindings page. While this works fine, it can waste time (especially if the target you want to focus starts the game in stealth). If you need to change your focused target during the fight, you will have to go through the process of targeting/focusing the correct enemy.

A much smoother way of doing this is by using the arena1 arena2 arena3 notation. If you create a macro containing “/focus arena2″, when you press it your focus will automatically change to the second enemy target (use either Gladius or the ingame arena frames to see the order of your opposition).

Once you have sorted out a way of marking a target to be focused, you need to change your spell macros to take advantage of this. The syntax for casting on your focused target is;

/cast [target=focus] SPELLNAME

You may want to create focus macros for the following abilities – sap, blind, kick, dismantle, maybe even gouge if you have the space.

So, that’s another four buttons you need to bind to keys, several more if you include the /focus arena1 etc buttons. The least confusing way of binding these macros to keys is to bind them onto the same key as the non-focused versions, but using a modifier key. If your kick ability is set to ‘4′, then bind your focus-kick macro to shift+4 (you could use alt/ctrl instead, but shift is easier to hit with your little finger).

If you want to save space on your action bars, you can combine both the non-focus and focused spells into the same macro. Going back to the idea of using ‘4′ for kick, swap your kick spell for the following macro;

#showtooltip kick
/cast [mod:shift,target=focus] kick; kick;

“Mod:shift” refers to using the shift key as a modifier – replace ’shift’ with ctrl or alt where needed (or even rctrl/rshift/ralt for the version of the keys on the right-hand side of your keyboard).

I use shift+F1 for /focus arena1, shift+F2 for arena2 and shift+F3 for arena3. Not only does this let you continue to use the F-keys to select members of your own group, but it also lets you swap to a new focus then quickly blind them, without having to take your finger off the shift key.

You may want to experiment with using focuses in battlegrounds first. While focus techniques do offer a large advantage over manually targeting players, they do take a while to get used to. However, don’t let this put you off – it’s an invaluable tactic that will really make things easier for you. As well as being able to quickly interrupt/blind targets, you’ll also be able to see your targets cast bar, giving you a better idea of what’s going on around you.

I spoke to a rogue a while back who was using focus to let him ‘easily’ put Tricks of the Trade onto whoever he was doing arenas with. No no no no, please don’t! Create a macro targeting your partner through their name – such as “/cast [target=Lylla] tricks of the trade” – and use your focus for greater control of the opposition.

As I’ve talked about previously, if you’re having random lag or high latency try running through a proxy.There’s more information about that here. I’m down to 70ms now in arenas – compared to 250ms it’s ~very~ noticable (a good test is to use Fan of Knives and check the delay between the keypress and the animation/sound happening).

Once you’ve got your connection running as smooth as possible, it’s worth trying out a very useful addon called SnowfallKeyPress. By default, when you press a key you have a spell bound to, nothing happens until you release your finger off the key. This addon changes that, so as soon as you press a key the action takes place. We’re not talking about massive time savings here, but hey, every little helps!

Like, but this with ice

Frost Mages. One of the thorns in a rogue’s side since TBC, these icy vending machines still prove to be a worthy counter to our class. Arguably a skilled mage will be able to take down an equally skilled/geared rogue, but with a bit of luck and focus you can still score kills. As well as mastering your own class, you do need to understand the mage class and be able to anticipate their actions/cooldowns.

The following is a breakdown of a typical frost mage’s repertoire.

PASSIVE ABILITIES

Ice Armor

Expect this self-buff to be active all of the time – as soon as you start unloading damage onto the mage you will be affected by the chilled debuff. Due to unusual game mechanics, this will happen before your Deadly Brew procs crippling poison, so remember to keep running forwards to try to compensate for this.

Frostbite

Unless the mage forgot to assign their talent points, expect them to have this tier1 talent. Any spell that puts the ‘chilled’ debuff onto you has a 15% chance to freeze you in place for 5 seconds. Spells that can trigger this are Ice Armor, Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frostbolt.

Ice Barrier

With decent spellpower plus the Ice Barrier Glyph, this will absorb 5-6k of your damage. The mage will reapply this when it wears off, so expect to see it a couple of times. If you are lucky enough to be able to pick the moment of your opening move, don’t attack until the moment the mage reapplies this (you want to smash through it quickly, leaving it on cooldown for as long as possible). Keep an eye out for the buff icon, it’s the same one as Cold Blood.

Shattered Barrier

As soon as you put out enough damage to destroy the Ice Barrier, you will be frozen in place.

DEFENSIVE ABILITIES

Brrrr

Ice Block

If a paladin’s bubble is the mother of all defensive cooldowns, Ice Block is its crazy middle-aged auntie. Unless you lock them out of their frost school by kicking a frost spell, this can be used to cancel all CC (except cyclone) and silencing affects. With the right glyph, this will reset the cooldown on Frost Nova. I’ll come back to Ice Blocks later, there are a few things you should/shouldn’t do when faced with one.

Frost Nova

Another AoE snare. If you’re chasing down a mage who you’re expecting to cast a frost nova, try to jump just as you get in range. You’ll still be snared, but you’ll continue to travel through the air, maybe ending up a few more feet. The phrase “Nerf gravity!” has appeared in a couple of frost mage threads on forums for just this reason

Blink

A very self explanitory spell, and the reason why you shouldn’t open with a cheap-shot. Only use your cheap-shot/kidney-shot when this spell is on cooldown, or if you wish to force the mage to use this. Wasting 5 combo points on a 0.2sec stun is a good way to lose a match/duel. Using a 1combo point stun when the mage is facing a wall/side-edge of a bridge can occasionally cause them to waste their blink (quite common to see in games played at low rating).

Invisibility

Similar to vanish, but with a slight delay before it takes effect. This will break on damage, so dots/fan of knives will cancel the invisibility.

Cold Snap

Preparation for mages – resets frost spell cooldowns, including Ice Block (but hypothermia will prevent a double iceblock for 30seconds).

CROWD CONTROL

Polymorph

Sheep, pig, rabbit.. the effect is the same no matter what you’re turned into. I asked a mage-playing friend if the chosen animal symbolised any sort of sexual preference – apparently it does, but I need to level a mage before he’ll tell me.

Deep Freeze

Only usable when you are frozen, which unfortunately is hard to predict (due to the random nature of frostbite procs).

AoE

Arcane Explosion

A mage’s number #1 anti-sap spell – makes getting a sap risky, but the longer you can keep a mage using this the better. I like to drop a distract behind an AoEing mage as soon as he sits down to drink, as it tends to keep him on his toes (and hopefully encourages him to waste a bit more mana with some more arcane explosion spam).

Cone of Cold

This is a decent retaliation to your vanish – better than an arcane explosion as it will reapply the chilled snare that your vanish just removed.

OFFENSIVE ABILITIES

Mirror Image

One of a mage’s more confusing spells (especially when combined with a 180° spin+blink combo), this can cause targeting problems if you’re not paying attention. It’s a good habbit to change your keybindings – I have tab set to ‘target enemy player’ and shift-tab to ‘target enemy’. If you do this and clear your current target with the escape key, you’ll be able to cycle through enemy players without having to flick between the mirrors/totems/pets.

Frostbolt

Nothing too special about this spell other than its ability to apply the chilled debuff.

Ice Lance

Forming part of the deadly ‘Frostbolt/double ice lance shatter combo’, this instant spell is lack-lustre until you find yourself frozen (at which point you’ll suddenly see over a third of your health vanish). You can be kited with this spell, which is frustrating, but at least it doesn’t cause a chilling debuff.

OTHER ANNOYANCES SPELLS

Time for a Gouge

Evocation

Interrupt, interrupt interrupt. This is a channelled spell, but do NOT rely on just your damage breaking it. If the mage has Ice Barrier up at the same time, he will absorb all the damage and the spell will not be interrupted. Gouge is a life saver here, even blind can be used in an emergency. With the normal combination of PVP glyphs, evocation will also restore 60% of their HP… interrupt it!

Summon Water Elemental

Not a massive source of damage, this 45-second summoned pet has one outstanding ability – Freeze. This is another freezing snare, but with the added bonus to the mage of being able to cast it from 45yards away using his pet as the point of origin.

Arcane Missiles / Fire Blast

An instant cast and a chanelled cast that you will sometimes see. Arcane missiles cannot be LoS’d once the spell begins, so ducking behind a pillar will not prevent you from taking damage.

Additional Tactics for Rogue vs Mage

The Opener

In a situation where you can decide when to start the fight, wait until the moment that the mage reapplies ice barrier. You want to destroy it and leave it on cooldown for as long as possible.

If you can safely avoid the inevitable arcane explosions, a well timed sap can help you move in close to open with a garrote. Due to the unusual mechanic of the Deadly Brew talent, your crippling poison won’t proc immediately, meaning you will be effected by the ‘chilled’ ice armor snare before the mage is slowed by your poison. To counter this, try and run through the mage in anticipation of him also running forward.

Your garrote will give you three seconds to put out as much damage as humanly possible. A double mutilate+coldblood eviscerate (with pyro-rockets if you have them) will smash through the Ice Barrier and cause at least some damage to the mage. By this point you will most likely be frozen in place from either Frostbite or Shattered Barrier – this is the mage’s cue to blink from you. In a duel/1v1 scenario you will need to vanish as soon as possible, otherwise you will eat a Deep Freeze.

Now that blink is on cooldown, you can open up with a cheap shot. This is likely to trigger either a trinket or an Ice Block.

The Ice Block

With the mage tucked safely away in his block of ice, you will need to reassess the situation. Are you clean of dots, and don’t have his partner/pet hitting you? If so, dropping from combat to restealth will possibly give you another opportunity to open up with a garrote/ambush. Bear in mind that if you run off, you might find the mage cancels Ice Block early and lands a Fire Blast on you, keeping you in combat. If you can’t drop out of combat, you need to position yourself infront of the mage. If his Water Elemental is shooting at you, don’t be tempted to switch to it and start attacking. Ignore the damage and wait for the Ice Block to expire.

By now the cooldown on blink will have worn off, so the mage will want to use it the second Ice Block wears off. While they can blink out of cheap-shot and kidney-shot, they cannot escape from a gouge. If you land your gouge at the right moment, they will blink through it, and appear on the other side of the arena in a gouged state. Even with the ‘chilled’ debuff, you’ll have time to catch up to the mage to unload more damage (unfortunately, you’ll have to beat through another Ice Barrier as the cooldown will be off by now). Ideally you’ll still have Cloak of Shadows / PVP Trinket / Preparation / Sprint available – use them to apply more pressure when needed.

Gouge the Blink

When trying to gouge a blink after an Ice Block, the best technique for this I’ve found is to focus on the actual mage character on the screen rather than watch his Ice Block buff timer. Regardless of whether the Ice Block expires normally or is cancelled prematurely, the mage has to sit through a split-second animation of it fading. You need a decent conenction, but it is when the ice turns from white to blue that you need to quickly hit gouge. If the mage doesn’t blink, wait until you’ve got your energy back from gouging before launching into an attack (ice block will clear any dots, so it will be a full duration gouge) . Fighting good frost mages is all about maximizing the damage you can do to them during the brief moments you get to sit on them, so pool your energy!

It’s also possible to gouge after your initial garrote, but only if you manage to get infront of the semi-snared mage before the garrote silence wears off (harder than it sounds).

Footnote

I hope that is of some use – if there are any glaring mistakes, please let me know and I will fix them or add anything useful that’s been missed off.

Assassination

Assassination Talents

Yellow Talents – Essentials (twenty-nine points)
These are the essential talents you can’t afford to skip when making an Envenom build.

Red Talents – six points
To unlock the later tiers, you’ll need to spend six points here. Theoretically you could assign more, but it’s generally regarded that the later talents are more valuable.

Improved Eviscerate – It’s a lot harder to keep Deadly Poison stacked on another rogue (thanks to their Master Poisoner, CloS and being kited) so you’ll probably be falling back on eviscerate to deal finisher damage. If rogue teams are hurting you, taking this talent and carrying a second dagger with wound poison on can help balance things out.

Ruthlessness – For back-to-back envenoms. This is a personal favorite of mine, as with a bit of luck you can envenom, then mutilate, then 4pt envenom again (thanks to the ruthlessness proc followed by a mutilate crit). Also nice for applying 1pt ruptures to rogues, with a 60% of another combo point after the rupture.

Lethality – Your mutilate/gouge will crit for more – not as powerful as it sounds, but a safe choice for three points.

Purple Talents – Four/Five points

Improved Poisons – The faster you can reach five applications of Deadly Poison (and keep them stacked), the faster you can start ripping into your target. I really recommend going for 5/5 in this talent, though several very good rogues are playing with 4/5 (and who am I to argue! ). A point saved here can be dropped into any of the following green talents.

Green Talents – Four points

Quick Recovery – Pretty essential for most comps other than double-dps in 2v2. Even if you’re rarely being focused, you’ll probably be taking damage from dots/aoe etc and the free energy gained vs rogues/warriors/prots is noticable.

Improved Kidney Shot – With a team that is capable of unloading extreme burst (for example, rogue/ret/priest with an aggresive priest) you’re looking at a lot of extra pressure from this talent. For 2v2 teams (or 3v3 teams with toothless resto-healers) you’ll likely be better off concentrating on increasing your own DPS rather than your partners, as you’re now bringing a lot of damage to the table in comparrison to the traditional 41/5/25 specs.

Deadened Nerves – For times when your survivability is an issue. I would rather increase my resilience than spend talent points, but if you lack the gear (or are getting rolled even with 1000 resilience) this will be a help.

Focused Attacks / Find Weakness – Two points in FW will give more dps than two points in FA in a PVP environment. Taking three points in FA makes it viable, but at the cost of a lost point.

Subtlety / Combat

Subtlety/Combat

Red Talents – Six points

Camouflage – Faster movement and quicker restealthing (useful for sap>cheapshot>restealth tricks).

Serrated Blades – As much as I try, I just can’t become enthusiastic about this talent. A reduction of 640 armor (when a large chunk of our damage bypasses it) is a very low buff. I only use rupture to stop rogues from stealthing so increasing the damage it does seems a trivial buff.

Ghostly Strike – I don’t know of any rogues who use this talent with an assassination spec, but I’ll be experimenting with it after christmas (as soon as I’ve found a spare keybinding!).

Setup – While the free combos can be great (especially for back-to-back envenoms), this can backfire and actually cost you points. Unless you play with mouseover dismantle/focus/blind macros, there’s a chance you will generate a combo on the wrong person, losing the ones you have on your target. You can get around this in the 2v2 bracket by always using focus macros, but in 3v3/5v5 you may need to manually switch target, risking the generation of a combo point on the warrior you were about to disarm.

Initiative – Assuming you’ve already taken Camouflage, Initiative is the best of a mediocre bunch. This is only a reliable bonus when you opening with garrote (as you’re likely to waste the +1 from Kidney Shot when your Mutilate crits), but hey, it’s better than a rupture buff or 2% crit reduction!

Green Talents – Four points

Heightened Senses – If you’re NightElf/Human, have a decent connection, and feel confident that you can avoid being sapped, skip this talent. Likewise, if your team’s tactics involve keeping you safely hidden until their rogue is forced to help his half-dead teammates, consider spending your last two points elsewhere.

Dual Wield Specialization – A flat damage increase to your auto-attacks and mutilates. The norm at the moment is to spend two points if you take Heightened Senses, or four points otherwise.

Deadliness – When you absolutely, positively got to maximise the damage from envenom, this is the way forward. A flat AP increase will benefit all of your attacks and poison damage, though theorycrafting is indicating that points in Dual Wield Spec will give higher dps. If you’re queueing against nothing but plate teams, I have a feeling that 4% increased AP will be more beneficial than mitigated extra damage from your auto-attacks/mutilates from DWS, but this is purely guess-work and I wouldn’t personally risk it.

Bootnote

As well as wanting to have a play with Ghostly Strike (I’ll skip Heightened Senses and go 3/5 in Dual Wield Specialization), I’m also considering trying 3/3 Find Weakness + 3/5 in Cut to the Chase, at the loss of DWS/HS.
I’m wondering if the 60% chance of refreshing S’n'D combined with lucky Ruthlessness procs will give enough extra haste/Deadly Poison procs to outdps the gains I’d get from +40% offhand damage. At the moment I only really use S’n'D for when we hard-switch targets and I’d like to see the difference 100% S’n'D makes in an arena environment.

As usual it’s situational, and requires preparation (and yet another weapon in your bag), but for 1v1 in arenas (or BGs), it can tip the odds in your favour. There are times when you’ll want to sap until your target’s Ice Barrier or PW:S wears of, so if you’re going to be standing around idle you might as well get a couple of free combo points! Camouflage helps, as you’ll be able to restealth quicker.

The trick revolves around how your autoattacks only work on targets in a 90° arc infront of you, while special attacks work in a 180° arc.

No it's not a Pokemon ball...

The trick is to sap your target, then rotate so you can use cheapshot without your autoattacks connecting. For some reason cheapshot does not break stealth, so you can cancel your autoattack and leave combat before sap wears off. Once you are out of combat, you can restealth and benefit from the two combo points you now have on your target.

Unfortunately there’s a catch. It is possible for your mainhand poison to proc on the cheapshot, breaking the stealth. The only way to avoid this is to, yep, use a weapon without a poison on it (or use mind-numbing if you’re feeling flash). Just remember to swap back to your regular weapon afterwards!

If you’re having problems with positioning, I have a macro I wrote that interrupts the autoattack by starting to craft a bandage, but tbh it’s not hard to get the hang of, just keep trying! Unfortunately you won’t be dropped out of combat if you try this on regular mobs, but you can still get used to rotating away from your target.

Paladins are pretty much good at anything they do … dps , healing and even tanking. I am going to give you hints on how to beat this class in 1v1 and I hope this will help you get them down in 2v2 as well. (The tactics I’ll be supplying you with won’t matter that much in 3v3 imho.)

The ret pala has quite a few abilities you want to watch out for.

Consecration

An 8 yard AOE on the ground.

Retribution Aura

One of the many auras paladins have but this one is a pain in the butt. Every time you hit the paladin you will receive damage yourself.

Avenging Wrath

The paladin pops his Avenging Wrath and all his damage and healing is increased by 20% for the next 20 seconds.

Divine Storm

An instant weapon attack that causes 110% of weapon damage to up to 4 enemies in an 8 yard range. (This will knock you out of stealth if you are close to him!)

Hand of Freedom

This will (if specced correctly) remove your stun effect from the paladin. It can be cast while he is stunned so watch out!

And of course he has his bubble, HoP , Repentance and a few more tools. So… how do we beat a retri paladin?

It is fairly easy. Lets say you are dueling a retri paladin, here is what I do:

Duel starts in 3…2…1

Okay lets wait for a few seconds shall we? The paladin is likely to use 1 or 2 aoe abilities while hoping to find you. Wait till he has used at least his consecration. As soon as that has been used sap him.

Now here is where quite a lot of people do the wrong thing. I barely ever open on a paladin with cheap shot. As soon as the consecration fades I garrote the pala and get a quick mutilate in. 4/5 CP and then Rupture him. As soon as you have both those dots up use cloak of shadows if needed and vanish!

Now one of the following things is going to happen ->

1. The paladin tries following you in an attempt to knock you out of stealth.
2. The paladin starts healing himself.

If the paladin follows you in an attempt to find you just keep running from him for another 3-4 seconds and then you may open on him. If the paladin starts healing himself get back in there and open right away!

So how do you open after getting your dots up? That is correct! You cheap shot him!
Go back in there CS -> Muti x2 -> Did the pala use Hand of Freedom? -> Yes, kidney shot. -> No, Eviscerate.

The paladin should be about half his health and probably even lower now. You have forced him to bubble most likely. If he does bubble just sprint and restealth. If he doesn’t bubble disarm him and pop your evasion if you feel like it. Some more mutilate spams and you should have him down!

Good Job!

I hope you enjoyed my wall of text. This is the first article I have ever written and I did not want to mess up by not giving enough info on how to beat the retri paladin.

Hints on how to give you better write ups are welcome! Just comment!

Morale: On plate such as warr/pala/DK -> Open with garrote/rupture! It’s a great headstart

In the past I’ve been using this macro whenever rogues/paladins opened on me;

/use PVP_TRINKET_NAME
/cast vanish
/cast cheap shot

It’s nice and simple, but not very effective (plus you have to spam it as you’ll probably be facing the wrong way at first). I rarely get the chance to land the cheapshot before I’m either AoE’d or FoK’d out of stealth. What I’ll be experimenting with over the next few days is;

/use PVP_TRINKET_NAME
/cast blind
/cast vanish

Even though it uses your blind immediately, it gives you a very good chance to turn the tables on the attacker, especially if you use it the very second you are opened on. I’ve been experimenting with other combinations of GCD/non-GCD spells but can’t find anything that works as well without the risk of unnecessarily blowing cooldowns that aren’t needed.

Would it be worth adding evasion into this macro? Theoretically if the person you just blinded went on to do the same to you, there’s a chance you’ll dodge their opener. However, if they wait until your Kidney Shot before trinketing, you’ve just lost a third of your evasion time. Personally I’ll give it a miss initially, but I’ll see how it goes in the future.

If you don’t want to use any cooldowns when you are jumped, try and get support from your partner. If their rogue can be CC’d before the end of his cheap shot you should be able to come out of stun naturally. On the other hand, if you find that you’re the one being sheeped/cycloned/hexed when opening on other rogues, try out the addon ‘Spellalerter‘, and be prepared to use Cloak of Shadow if you see any incoming casts on yourself.

* A really nice guy as well, thanks for taking the time out for a quick chat! Hopefully I’ll be trinket/blinding as fast as you one day

GCDs – What Are They?

Simply speaking, Global Cooldowns are the pauses between your special attacks that stop you from emptying your energy bar in less than a second. Without them, WoW would become a game where the winner would be the person who could press their buttons the fastest (think of a Mage machine-gunning Ice Lances at you). However, not all of your abilities trigger this GCD so it’s possible to chain together any of these in one macro. You can also include one attack/ability that does have a GCD in the same macro without any issues.

Abilities that don’t trigger the GCD

Rogue Specific

Cold Blood
Evasion
Preparation
Sprint
Vanish

Racials/Equipment (not a complete list)

Battlemaster Trinkets
Every Man for Himself
Hand Mounted Pyro Rockets
PVP Trinkets
Will of the Forsaken

GCDs in Macros

The least situational example of what you can do involves Preparation. This is an old favorite of many a rogue as it stops you wasting unused cooldowns when you’re forced to use Preparation early.

#showtooltip preparation
/cast [nostealth] evasion
/cast sprint
/cast preparation

Another macro that might be of use is this anti-BladeStorm one;

#showtooltip evasion
/cast evasion
/cast feint

You’re best off experimenting with other combos and finding out what is useful and what isn’t. Your only real limitation is the number of free spaces on your toolbars!

The first is nice and simple yet seems to work remarkably well (thx Tamatar for posting this macro);

/equipslot 16 IP_DAGGER_1
/equipslot 17 IP_DAGGER_2
/equipslot 16 WOUND_DAGGER_1
/equipslot 17 DEADLY_DAGGER_2

Each time you run this macro it equips the pair of daggers you don’t have equipped at that moment. Use it to toggle between
IP/IP and WD/Deadly (replacing IP_DAGGER_1 etc with the names of your daggers).

I’ll have a look at making a version of this that swaps your MH when wound is applied/about to run out, but I can’t tell if that would give a DPS boost or not.

You need to create two sets of gear (with just the daggers selected for changing), one with your Wound/Deadly daggers, the other with your IP daggers. Right-click on the IP set and click ’scripts>custom’ – paste in the following code;

– $EVENTS TIMER UNIT_COMBAT
local dp_name=”Deadly Poison IX”
local switch_time = 5
if UnitAffectingCombat(“player”) then
for i=1,40 do
local n,_,_,s,_,_,x,c,_=UnitDebuff(“target”,i);
if n==dp_name and c==”player” then
equip = not ( x-GetTime() > switch_time and s == 5 )
end
end
else
equip = false
end

Replace “Deadly Poison IX” with the localised name of the poison, and replace the local_switch_time number with the number of seconds before the poison stack wears off before you swap back to your Wound/Deadly daggers. If all goes well, your daggers will be automatically swapped once you get 5 stacks of DP, then swap back.

http://worldofwarcraft.com – Assassination: Weapon Swap Gimmick
http://arenajunkies.com – 3.2.2 patch, Instant Poison weapon swap idea

The idea behind it is to get a stack of 5 Deadly Poison on your target, then swap to a pair of daggers with Instant Poison on. As long as your target isn’t a rogue with the same spec (-50% poison duration), you have 12 seconds to do as much damage as you can before deadly poison wears off. With 3 seconds remaining on the Deadly stack, switch back to your original daggers to shiv.

While that doesn’t sound like it would cause too much extra damage, the poison proc boost given by Envenom dramatically increases the likelyhood of IP proccing. I’ve had it proc 7 times and still been able to change back in time to shiv Deadly and keep the stack alive. The ideal rotation for maximum DPS would be something like; Weapon swap, 5pt Envenom, Mutilate, Mutilate, 5pt Envenom, Weapon swap.

As usual, this tactic has it’s pros and cons.

Swapping weapons has a GCD, so you need to swap weapons immediately after the previous attack (so the GCD is shared with the one from your attack). When swapping back, you will need to leave enough time for the weapon swap GCD before shiving, so don’t leave it too late (3 seconds before the stack expires should be safe).

As well as having to worry about keeping deadly on your target, you also need to keep an eye on wound/crippling as well. The whole point of this weapon swap is to maximise burst, but all that is wasted if their healer can cast a full strength heal immediately after. Ideally you want to have the healer CC’d during this phase, (well, ideally you want to set this up so you get the kill), but nothing can be guaranteed in PVP.

A Druid’s ‘Abolish Poison’ and a Shaman’s ‘Cleansing Totem’ are your enemies – unless you can dispel/kill them, your stack will lose doses before you can do your second Envenom. Not too much of a problem if you play with a priest, but this can really mess up your cycle/dps otherwise.

Another downside is that you do need to have four decent daggers, but on the good side this means any Master Poisoner who bought the Relentless Mutilator before 3.2.2 will now have a use for it again!

However, all that negativity aside, if you do manage to set up your target with a full stack of deadly and can keep the healer tied up, this weapon swap should get you an additional burst of 4k+ damage compared to not swapping. It’s a situational tactic you won’t be able to use in every game, but anything that can give that sort of bonus should not be ignored.

The macros to swap weapons are very easy to setup; use /equipslot followed by 16 (Mainhand) or 17 (Offhand) then the name of your dagger.

#show NAME_OF_WEAPON
/equipslot 16 NAME_OF_WEAPON
/equipslot 17 NAME_OF_WEAPON

Setup two macros, one to swap to your IP weapons, and one to swap to your Deadly weapons.

A variation of this macro (used by Stealthma on AJ) combines the envenoms/shivs with the weapon swaps. This saves you two buttons on your bars, but does mean you won’t be able to Envenom without changing to your IP weapons. Personally I’d rather have the option of being able to envenom without swapping weapons, but you might find this works well for your own playstyle.

#showtooltip envenom
/equipslot 17 NAME_OF_IP_DAGGER
/equipslot 16 NAME_OF_IP_DAGGER
/cast envenom

#showtooltip shiv
/equipslot 17 NAME_OF_DEADLY_WEAPON
/equipslot 16 NAME_OF_DEADLY_WEAPON
/cast shiv

You will need to press each macro twice, the first time to swap weapons, the second to envenom or shiv.

Your Connection

One of the problems is that after pressing ‘vanish’, it takes a short time for your client to update the server so that the rest of the World (of Warcraft) knows you have vanished. Unfortunately things can go wrong during this delay, such as your auto-attacks continuing to proc.

This can be ‘fixed’ by making a very basic macro for vanish rather than casting the spell directly.

#showtooltip vanish
/stopattack
/cast vanish

That’s quickly fixed one of the problems associated with vanish failing, now for the next.

Your Opponents’ Connection/Attacks

Death Knights in PVP – What to Expect

Death Grip
If you are chasing down the DK’s partner, expect this every 25-35 seconds. If you are trying to escape from the DK, expect this every 25-35 seconds. The cooldown depends on the DK’s spec (Unholy DK gets -10secs off the cooldown)and costs zero runic power/runes, so unless you can CC the DK out of the game, expect to spend a lot of time flying backwards and forwards through the air.

Chains of Ice
While it’s common to see DKs cry out “CoI isn’t spammable!”, theoretically it is on a 5 second cooldown making it a very effective way of locking down a rogue. A common tactic it seems is for the DK to Death Grip you then immediately cast Chains of Ice (unless it is an Unholy DK, more on that later). Vanish/CoS/Escape Artist/Improved Sprint will clear this debuff, but only until the next application – there are no dimminishing returns from CoI whatsoever.

Raise Dead
Summons an undead pet (vulnerable to shackle/turn evil). The strength of the pet depends on the spec of the DK. Unholy DKs have a pet that can stun every 20 seconds which they can resummon/resurect every 30seconds (not worth killing unless you play with a healer that needs to drink). A Frost DK’s pet is easier to kill, dies after 1 minute, does less damage and has a 3minute resummoning CD.

Death Pact
An instant heal for 40% (20% with wound poison) of the DKs health in exchange for sacrificing their ghoul/gargoyle. For an Unholy DK this is pretty much a free heal every 2 minutes.

Icebound Fortitude
Stun resistance and damage reduction for 12 seconds (18 seconds for a Frost DK). A DK with IBF up can be sapped, blinded and gouged so use this to your advantage if needed. I find that DKs tend to ignore me and tunnel my partner instead (priest), saving their IBF for when my partner is in trouble.

Mind Freeze/Strangulate
While this won’t affect you directly (unless the DK has gotten over excited and mashed the wrong button), it’s useful to know that a DK can silence your partner for a long time, especially when using Gnaw as well.

Death and Decay
A cross between consecration and distract, this low-dmg spell can be cast upto 30yards away. This will take you out of stealth if it lands where you are standing so try not to stand anywhere ‘obvious’ if you can help it. If you play with a priest, a PW:shield will prevent DnD from unstealthing you. Otherwise, wait until it wears off – it lasts for 10 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.

Death Knight Specs

Frost Death knights

How to spot them: Duel wielding,
Strengths: High dps, massive damage mitigation
Weaknesses: Still trying to find one

Abilities

Hungering Cold
A 10-yard AoE freeze that allows diseases to continue ticking on you.

Lichborne
This will make the DK immune to charm effects, though it cannot be used to break them. When under the effect of Lichborne, the DK will be vulnerable to anti-undead spells such as Shackle and Turn Evil. Be careful not to confuse the ability with a trinket – if a DK uses Lichborne to break a fear you will not be able to blind him afterwards. Using the Gladius addon helps avoid this confusion.

Unbreakable armor
This defensive ability can be using at the same time as IBF and Lichborne, creating a hard hitting almost untouchable killing machine. When this happens, ‘gouge’ and ‘disarm’ are good friends to have.

Unholy Death knights

How to spot them: 2-Handed weapon, leaping pet,
Strengths: Massive dps, high damage mitigation
Weaknesses: See Frost DK weaknesses

Bone Shield
Easy to spot, this takes the form of several bones spinning around the DK. Try and knock it off with white damage while your energy regens, rather than using a mutilate.

Desecration
This ground-based aura procs automatically from a couple of a DK’s offensive melee spells. There’s not much you can do about it as it is relatively easy for the Death Knight to keep it active (no internal CD).

Summon Gargoyle
Does exactly what it says on the can. An additional minion that throws out a lot of damage for a maximum of 30seconds. Priests can shackle it and paladins can fear it, and as it now flies close to the ground, it might be worthwhile gouging it if you’re keeping gouge/deadly poison ticking on the Death Knight.

Shamans in PVP – What to Expect

Totems

Shamans can put down four totems at once – there are 23 different totems, but the most problematic ones available to all specs of Shamans are as follows;

	Cleansing Totem (Water)	Cleansing totems will attempt to remove one poison off each party member every 3seconds.
	Earthbind Totem (Earth)	Reduces your movement speed by 50%, 10yard range. Luckily this totem has a 15second CD so can’t be spammed.
	Manaspring Totem (Air)	Restores a small amount of mana every 2seconds. Not as powerful as the Mana Tide totem, but worth destroying nonetheless.
	Magma Totem (Fire)	This totem pulses an 8-yard AoE every 2 seconds. If this hits you it will remove your sltealth.

The other totems generally give party buffs so it’s a good idea to destroy them if you get the chance. If you play with a healer, try and convince them to either wand or melee down the totems whenever they get a spare few seconds between heals. The Shaman will most likely keep dropping them, but this costs mana and gives them a GCD. Unfortunately totems can no longer be targeted with macros, but your partners can use a [target=mouseover] macro to help wand/petattack them without changing target. AoE has no effect on totems, so don’t waste energy trying to FoK them down.

Bloodlust/Heroism

A 40second buff that increases all enemies melee/ranged/spell casting speed by 30%. I normally try and keep some defensive abilities in reserve for this as it’s not uncommon for the other team to combine this buff with their other DPS cooldowns.

Hex

A strange form of CC that lets you continue to move normally, but unable to cast/attack. You can still activate sprint/stealth, so it might be worth using this as on opportunity to get out of combat and re-open on someone, rather than just hopping around behind your target waiting for it to run out.

Kiting

With the changes to Ghost Wolf last patch, it is now quite hard to keep on-top of a Shaman if they are trying their hardest to get away from you. Crippling poison/deadly throw won’t decrease a Ghost Wolf’s movement speed to less than 100% and they can combine this bonus with Frost Shock, Tremor Totem and even Thunderstorm to keep away from you.

Shaman Specs

Restoration Shamans

How to spot them: Check their partners for an Earth Shield buff
Strengths: Able to kite
Weaknesses: Can struggle with mana compared to other healing classes

Abilities

Earth Shield
Each time you hit someone who has Earth Shield active, you will heal them for a small amount once every second. As a rogue there is nothing you can do about this (other than trying to LoS your target from the Shaman) but if your partner can keep dispelling it you will hurt the Shaman’s mana. Dispelling Earth Shield only removes one of the stacks.

Mana Tide Totem
Kill this as soon as you see it – it will restore 24% of the other team’s mana over 12 seconds. It’s quite easy to spot as it has a pulsing animation.

Nature’s Swiftness

Converts a Shaman’s timed heal into an instant cast. If you are partnered with a Mage they can spell-steal this buff if they are quick enough.

Tactics

In 3v3 Resto Shamans seem very easy to burst down and our tactics generally involve opening on the Shaman as hard as we possibly can and swapping if needed. In 2v2 playing as rogue/healer it’s a different story – even when I’m in Mutilate/Prep spec I struggle to stay on top of a good Resto Shaman. Instead we concentrate on out-lasting them which seems relatively easy as long as we kill the Mana Tide totem and stop them from drinking. Playing as double-dps in 2v2 probably gives enough burst to kill them so it might be worth experimenting with.

Elemental Shamans

How to spot them: The buff from their Totem of Wrath. Using caster weapons and shields/caster offhands
Strengths: Insane damage if left alone
Weaknesses: Low survivability

Abilities

Thunderstorm
While this isn’t as annoying in arenas as it is in BGs (especially in EotS and AB), it can still get in the way when you’re trying to burst down an Elemental Shaman. While it’s possible to use Cloak of Shadows to preempt the knockback, it’s a better idea to always makes sure that you position yourself properly. If you think they might use a Thunderstorm (often when they are low health and stunned), try and make sure your back is facing a wall/pillar if possible (to reduce the distance you are thrown backwards). Whatever you do, don’t let the Shaman use it to knock you off the bridge in the Blades Edge Arena or off the platform in Dalaran Sewers. If a shaman kites you behind the boxes in the sewers, expect them to use thunderstorm, so try and predict the cast and dodge backwards behind the corner of the boxes (easier said than done!).

Lava Burst
If you have the DoT from Flame Shock ticking on you, this 2-second cast spell will have a 100% crit chance. Expect to be hit for 5-8k damage every 8 seconds, unless you can keep interrupting.

Flame Shock
Used in conjunction with above, this guarantees a crit from a Lava Burst. However, if the DoT from Flame Shock is dispelled, you increase the Shaman’s casting time by 30%.

Tactics
Interrupt like crazy, avoid the knockback and nuke as fast as you can. Left to their own devices, Elemental Shamans can pull insane amounts of damage out of nowhere, so don’t let them stand there casting on you while you chase their partners.

Enhancement Shamans

Abilities

Feral Spirit
The two pets that this spell summons are fast moving and can each stun you for two seconds. 150% of their damage is returned as healing for both the wolves and the Shaman. They last for 45seconds so it’s worth saving evasion for this spell.

Shamanistic Rage
A 15 second damage reduction talent that allows the Shaman to regen mana whilst hitting you. If you are managing to keep the Shaman’s mana low you might want to play defensively while this buff is active by gouging and trying to conserve energy.

Tactics

Enhancement Shamans don’t seem very popular at the moment, so I haven’t played that many games against them. Shamans I have spoken to recommend going toe-to-toe Rogue vs Shaman as the lack of defensive cooldowns will become apparent after the Shaman has used all their Cooldowns.

Because we’re sitting on our 2v2 rating for pts and weapons, we’ve started messing around in 3v3 with an arms warrior who’s just getting into arenas (hateful/pve gear). Using the goggles gave such an advantage against any stealthed team that it did begin to genuinely feel like I was exploiting/cheating. In the Ring of Valor, I was able to sap their rogue before the lifts had reached the top and in several games their rogue was unable to do any dps before dying. The only times we didn’t get the opener on the opposition rogue was when I had accidentally replaced them by playing around with the ingame equipment manager.

Even though the teams we were beating weren’t amazingly good (1900rated max) all of us feel that the goggles gave a huge boost to our chances of winning, and as we get better geared, learn how to work in a team and generally get to grips with this new concept of ‘3v3′, we think the goggles will still give us one hell of an advantage over the opposition.

As far as an item stats comparison goes, compared to the Deadly Gladiator’s Leather Helm the Hypervision Goggles suck terribly. -84 agility, -115 stam, -51 crit, -66 resilience, -meta socket, -red socket, -10 energy (broken set bonus for me). However, they give an almost guaranteed opener on any rogue who isn’t wearing them. It’s hard to put a value on that, I don’t know what stats my helm would need to give before I’d consider the Hyper-vision Goggles as inferior for arenas.

Is it cheap/lame though? It certainly feels overpowered in 3v3 and probably 5v5. For 2v2 I’ll stick to a Gladiator’s Helm – rogue teams aren’t too much of a problem for us (it’s the FotMs that kill us) so the stat nerf from using the goggles would not be much fun.

Hopefully our warrior will gear up qucikly and we’ll all learn enough about 3v3s to make me put the goggles back in the bank for a rainy day. We’ll see.

The Hypervision Goggles require engineering and are taught by a trainer in Shadowmoon Valley

I thought I’d post a quick breakdown of keybindings I use – there are a couple of keycombos I use that people might have overlooked (and aren’t too hard to reach).

Key:
Yellow – no modifier
Green – shift modifier
Red – both shit modifer and ctrl modifier (though not shift+ctrl at once)
Blue – movement
Grey – default wow bindings
White – unused (or some wow function I never bother with)
Black – pulled out with a screwdriver

Mouse Bindings

Button 3 – Blind
Button 4 – Shiv
Shift+Button 3 – Blind focused target

Keyboard Bindings (Unstealthed)

` – Vanish
1 – Kidney Shot
2 – Rupture
3 – Eviscerate
4 – Gouge
5 – Kick
Shift+1 – Preparation (or Hunger For Blood in 53/5/13 build)
Shift+2 – Slice ‘n’ Dice
Shift+3 – Envenom
Shift+4 – Evasion
Shift+5 – Kick focused target

E – Mutilate (actually a mutilate macro
Q – Disarm
V – Cloak of Shadow
T – Feint
Z – Sprint
Tab – Target Nearest Enemy Player (instead of Nearest Enemy Target)

Shift+E – Cold Blood
Shift+Q – a href=”http://lastrogue.com/?cat=7″>Tricks of the Trade macro
Shift+V – Trinket
Shift+T – Throw/Deadly Throw macro
Shift+Space – Stealth
Shift+Z – Rocket Boots

Ctrl+E – Fan of Knives
Ctrl+Q – Hypervision Goggles
Ctrl+V – Distract

Keyboard Bindings (Stealthed)

1 – Cheap Shot
2 – Sap macro
3 – Pick Pocket
4 – Sap
E – Garrotte
Q – Ambush
Shift+E – Cold Blood

After a bit of playing about last night (faking afk and trying to get mages to jump me in WSG) it seems that using distract to spin a caster around before their spell cast completes is both doable and fun . In ‘real’ combat, I didn’t get an opportunity since everyone was constantly in combat and not distractable, but in an arena* it’s something that’s worth remembering and probably worth binding to a key if you have any left.

* I’ve been slacking with arenas since 3.2 came out as my 2v2 partner has been on holiday, but will be playing rated games as of tonight. After killing Death Knights in Wintergrasp with 2 tenacity buffs 1v1 I’m feeling hopeful that they’ve been hit hard enough to stop the bad ones beating us in arenas, but knowing my luck those were probably bots or something.

After four years of playing rogues, I realised last month that you can use distract without being stealthed. I’d only ever used it before to spin mounted enemies around for sapping, so the spell had only been on my stealthed actionbar. Luckily, (and about time!) I’ve since found that distract can be used in several more ways, and definately deserves a place on my regular actionbar. It’s worth getting a Glyph of Improved Distract for the extra range this gives.

Distract interrupts drinking

It doesn’t put players in combat, but if a drinking player is affected they will turn around and stand up, stopping the drinking from affecting their mana.

Distract works around corners

The effect from distract doesn’t require LoS so if a healer has ran around a pillar to drink, this can save valuable time. It can be cast whilst moving, so no need to pause like you would if you were using a throw to interrupt.

Distract can help against rogues

This needs a fair bit of luck, but using distract on an area where you believe there’s a rogue could spin them around and stop their movement (depending on the skill of the other rogue, if he’s mouse-strafing and doing 360° jumps while spamming sap, the advantage you get will only be momentarily, but hey, every little helps). A stationary target is easier to sap since you’re not relying on their computer to upload their current location to the server.

Distract can seperate players from their pets

I guess this one is pretty situational, but a well placed distract will stop a pet’s movement for 10 seconds. Could be useful for setting up for a pet-kill, perhaps, maybe, possibly.

Distract can interrupt spellcasts…

… theoretically I’ve not tried this yet, but since it’s possible to sap a priest who has left combat and is starting to cast again, it makes sense that distract would work on them as well. I’ll test this out tonight, but I’m guessing that you should be able to spin the caster around and make their spell fail. I play a priest casually, and if someone span me on my holyfire cast, I’d certainly be confused as hell.

Death Knights

General damage reduction with some big hits to several of their rogue killers – AJ Glads are reporting Scourge Strike crits being reduced from 7.5k down to 4.2k on average. Icebound Fortitude cooldown is increased from 1minutes to 2minutes, and frost presence is giving less of a boost to health. Frost Strike can now be dodged/parried at last!

Druids

Feral damage reduced by 9%, resto druids healing for fractionally less.

Hunters

Deterance now gives dodge/parry to attacks from behind. Expect to see three traps down at once.

Mages

Permafrost now gives a 20% MS (Mortal Strike – healing reduction) effect. Relentless 4 Set bonus reducing the cast time of sheep by 1 second (unless that’s a typo and will get fixed before S7).

Paladins

Burst damage reduced, but general DPS about the same (being taken from 100>0 in a single Hammer of Justice shouldn’t happen anymore).

Priests

Penance CD increased by two seconds, shadow priests getting a 20% MS.

Rogues

Blizzard apparently think we’re fine. No changes to the important issues (like 10% failure on Cloak of Shadows compared to 100% success of DK’s Anti-magic Shell). The general consensus is that rogues will need to gear/talent more for survivability, though I guess if you team up with a non-standard partner that’s probably been the case since WotLK came out. Tricks of the Trade has been hit a little for mage/rogues, but to balance that we get axes! Awesome! Sarcasm!

Shamans

Deadly Throw, crippling poison and other snares will not reduce Ghost Wolf travel speed to less than normal walking speed. Increase in base health.

Warlocks

Pets getting a lot of buffing (almost unkillable in a 2v2 lock/healer scenario), slight damage reduction from the Warlock itself.

Warriors

Not too much in the way of changes, rage generation improved slightly and about 150 more AP gained from armour.

———————————

Not too bad by the sounds of it, a lot of much-needed nerfs to some of the burst classes, with a bit more well-deserved survivability for Shamans.

*Just a handful of EU servers online (all with queues up in the 1000s). Can I get a refund on my lunch hour pls? On the positive side I guess, I got around to fixing Cyanide Poison Reminder so it doesn’t detect fishing bait as a poison (luckily I have a horde rogue to test this out on while my mains are offline).

The chance that you are spotted is influenced by your Stealth Level and your opponents’ Detection Level – the only other things that affect it are the direction that your target is facing (never forget, “Rogues do it from behind”) and how much lag you both have.

If your connection is worse than the other rogue’s, you will appear on their screen before they appear on yours. It might be coincidental but I find that if I am sprinting in stealth I tend to get the jump more often, and I seem to get jumped more times when the other rogue is sprinting. I guess sprinting increases the advantage/disadvantage of the lag effect. Perhaps.

Rogue Stealth Level

There are a couple of other items as well, but these are low level and seriously damage your stats.

Stealth Detection

This is also determined by your level (5pts per level) + modifications from the following;

The worst combination of opponents you can get is a human rogue engineer with 2/2 in Heightened Senses, standing next to a Voidwalker with the Consume Shadows buff active. Their stealth detection level increases by 81pts – however, with 3/3 in Master of Deception, if you pre-vanish (vanish whilst in stealth before you get close to your target) you will still have a slight advantage compared to the other rogue. Risky though, it can be a waste of a ~very~ useful cooldown…